Gaming Expo's - Part 1 of 4

In 2026, I will attend both the UK Gaming Expo at the NEC in Birmingham, and Tabletop Scotland at the Royal Highland Showground in Edinburgh. TTS is at the start of September, but UKGE looms large, at the end of May. This blog post is about my preparation for that show.

Getting there and back

The NEC can be a strange place. It's located on the southwest side of Birmingham, and has two positives, and two negatives.

• +1: It is literally attached to Birmingham Airport, so getting to and from the venue from up here is easy

• +2: It has it's own train station, which gets you to Birmingham City Centre in 10 mins and is inexpensive

• -1: It is in the middle of nowhere otherwise, and whilst there are 5-10 hotels nearby, this is nowhere near enough for the Expo. It's barely enough for the exhibitors!

• -2: Parking is expensive, and food and drink is borderline ridiculous

I first attended several years ago, and a friend and I drove down. We had accommodation booked in the city centre but there was a train strike so we ended up driving back and forth. That cost ~£40 just to park. Last year, I travelled down on the Thursday and back on the Monday for a 3-day Fri-Sun experience. I stayed in the city centre, literally above the main station.

This year, I am going full cheapo. I am flying down on an early Friday flight, going to attend the show all day and then go into the city at night to check in and rest. Saturday is shopping day, and the only day I won't be carrying all my clothes around on my back. Sunday, I check out early and fly home on Sunday evening. I organised all this more or less immediately after last year, so the travel and accommodation is less than 1/3 of what it was for last year.

Shopping

Some of the eagle-eyed readers will be wondering what I would be buying if all I get to carry on is EasyJet's "small under seat bag"? UKGE recognise this is a challenge, so they have a logistics company on site who will ship a large box to you for only £17. So I will shop on Saturday, drop everything off in my box, and have Sunday to chill and play some games.

Events

There are always lots of events on the go at UKGE. I am not cool enough to follow the latest podcasts and trendy YouTubers, I only have eyes for The Village Meeple. So I avoid the pay to watch shows where someone I've never heard of plays a game I don't understand. There are however LOTS of seminars. This is a bunch of nerds sitting in a conference room, talking about how to improv, or the best accent to give a Dwarven NPC. This year, there is a chance I can meet one of my literary heroes as Ben Aaronovitch is going to be talking about his Rivers of London TTRPG (Yes Ryan, I have nearly finished reading the book!).

Rivers of London TTRPG by Chaosium

Gaming The show is fundamentally about gaming however. There were 4 halls last year full of stalls and bring and buy, but an entire hall was set aside for seating for open gaming. I'm looking forward to some of that, with new and old friends, as well as any demos for new games and seeing if there is anything the KGS library needs.

Swag & Promos

There's usually a decent chance at some swag, but I will again be representing KGS with my hat and bag, and telling anyone who will listen how awesome our new space is and how much our community matters to me.

Part 2 of this blog will be an after action report, due sometime in June.